Business and book website: wordwhisperer.net
Author of SETTLE FOR BEST: SATISFY THE WINNER YOU WERE BORN TO BE; SERVAL SON: SPOTS & STRIPES FOREVER; DeFOREST KELLEY: A HARVEST OF MEMORIES; FLOATING AROUND HOLLYWOOD; LET NO DAY DAWN THAT THE ANIMALS CANNOT SHARE(order at Amazon); and THE ENDURING LEGACY OF DeFOREST KELLEY(order at http://store.payloadz.com/go?id=382995)

Thursday, November 21, 2013

JFK Assassination 50 Years Later -- My Memories of that Horrific Day

I have been depressed for about a week. Very unlike me. Then I figured it out.I have been trying to "shove" the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination out of my mind with every ounce of my being ... but it keeps resurrecting itself like a bad nightmare that just won't go away.It won't go away. It never has. I don't see how it ever will.Thirteen years ago November 22nd began to have a happier association, when my grand niece Casey was born. Since then I have always been able to superscribe this one great joy over one of my childhood's greatest sorrows--but this year I can't because everywhere I look, online and off, JFK's life and death looms large. As it should. It happened fifty years ago tomorrow. In less than an hour's time, a nation changed. I was twelve when President Kennedy was killed. I was sick at home on the couch in Cle Elum when a news flash came on: President Kennedy has been hit by a bullet or bullets in Dallas, Texas. I was only half-listening to the TV when it happened. But for the next four days I was glued to the TV--we all were.When Walter Cronkite came on a half hour or so after the news bulletin to report that our President had died, and took his glasses off, trying not to cry, I went into a kind of unbelieving shock. What? Good guys don't die; they always survive gun shot wounds, no matter how grave. I'd grown up on westerns. For the next few days we tried to "do" Thanksgiving at my Aunt Marie's home in Seattle even as corteges and flag-draped coffins and a little boy named John-John and a little girl named Caroline said goodbye to their daddy, even as Jackie and Bobby Kennedy did their best to "keep it together" despite their very personal losses.I wrote a journal back then, trying to make sense of it all, trying to find some kind of 'happy ending' for this unbelievably sad story. Bobby Kennedy would marry Jackie, I decided. Then Mom told me that Bobby was married and had his own family and children. I didn't understand, then, why he couldn't have two families. I could tell he loved them.I watched for five years as Uncle Bobby helped raise and inform Caroline and John Jr. alongside his own boisterous brood. Then, on June 5, 1968, Caroline and John Jr and ten (soon to be eleven) other Kennedy children lost Bobby to another assassin's bullet as he ran for President to pick up the torch his brother had carried before him. This was too much for me. This wasn't fair. This wasn't right. This was inhuman. This was ungodly. So... I've been trying to "keep it all together" all month, to move on, to say 'that was then and this is now'. Casey sees all this as ancient history, I'm sure. But I was just a year younger than she is now when this "history" happened to my heart, soul and brain-- and I have never been the same--for better and for worse.The story still shocks and saddens me. I still (almost desperately) imagine a better outcome--I imagine the Kennedy brothers surviving their assassination attempts and a different trajectory altogether from the one our nation entered following those dark days. No Watergate. No Iran-Contra. No trickle down voodoo economics. When will I wake from this nightmare to find that so much of the past 50 years has been a bad dream, that most politicians haven't misbehaved (in the public interest and arena) as it appears they have (most of the time) since 1968?I imagine a nation that cares about all of its citizens, not just the 1%.I imagine we all do. What can we do about it?We can vote to bring compassion, justice, fairness, and equanimity back into the political space. Statesmen used to serve us. Have they all been silenced or murdered?No. Thankfully, no. So it isn't to late. It's just almost too late.If we don't vote for the changes we still need, we'll keep getting the shaft we've been getting.Don't give up. Don't ever give up. "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." JFK"Some men see things as they are and say 'Why?' I dream things that never were and say 'Why Not?'" RFK"The dream shall never die." EMKThree rich men who could easily have afforded to sit on their rear ends their entire lives and done nothing. Instead, they gave their all. And we are better for it.

About Me

A
Pacific Northwest native, Kristine M. Smith transformed her copywriting
business from a struggling start-up to a going concern in near-record time.
Prior to launching her own copywriting business, Kris served as a fledgling copywriter
for a local on-hold script production company, where she won Employee of the
Quarter the last two quarters she worked there.

Kris’s
freelance writing career was launched by actor DeForest Kelley more than forty
years ago. It was Kelley and his wife Carolyn who encouraged Kris to try
Hollywood on for size, which she did from 1989 to 2003. Kris served as Mr.
Kelley’s personal assistant and caregiver during the final months of his life
and presented heartfelt sentiments about her mentor at Paramount Studios'
memorial service for him in 1999. She has written two books about him: DeForest
Kelley: A Harvest of Memories and The Enduring Legacy of DeForest Kelley:
Actor, Healer, Friend. An enhanced version of Harvest with a new title and 50+ pages of riotous additional anecdotes will debut during Star Trek's 50th Anniversary in 2016.

In
Hollywood, Kris served as an administrative assistant and secretarial floater
to writers, producers and—later—information technology professionals at various
studios. Most of her Hollywood career was spent at Warner Bros. Studios in
Burbank where she served as an executive secretary for the VP of Software
Development and as a Hardware Lease Administrator. Kris’s most notable creative
endeavor at Warner Bros. was writing the copy for an intranet website to help
newly-arrived secretaries learn the ins and outs of serving on the WB campus in
record time. The website earned her a monetary reward and the coveted (don’t
laugh!) Carrot Award (Bugs Bunny runs da joint, ya know!); the accompanying Certification
of Appreciation was co-signed by the head of the Human Resources Department and
her boss.

The
author of seven books, Kris’s sixth title, Serval Son: Spots and Stripes Forever
(You are responsible for all you tame)—a cautionary true story about what it’s
like to own, and be owned by, a wild cat for seventeen years—reached the #2 and
#4 spots at Amazon in two niche categories when it debuted in September 2011.

Kris’s
newest title, Settle for Best: Satisfy the Winner You Were Born to Be, is a chapter-by-chapter
breakdown of the twenty commonalities of millionaire philanthropists as
discerned by Napoleon Hill in his seminal 20th century work, Think
and Grow Rich. Each chapter contains words of encouragement and
instructions to entrepreneurs and anyone else who wants to leave a business,
personal, or family legacy that will resonate for generations to come. Settle
for Best stood at #1 in the Motivational Self-Help category at Amazon for three
days when it debuted.